Page:All quiet along the Potomac and other poems.djvu/69

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A YEAR-OLD SORROW.
63

Though our tears and bitter wailing
Well attest our agony.
Calm and silent, calm and silent,
Never clod beloved wakes,
Though remorse sits close beside it,
And the heart repentant breaks.

Serve and wait, for when beyond us
Lives float off to yonder shore,
Never word or loving service
Can we render evermore.
And that river may be near us,
In this murky light unseen,
So let us strew along its borders
Boughs of living evergreen.




A YEAR-OLD SORROW.


A COMMON day, of sun and shade,
To you will come the morrow;
Alas! the August clasping bears
Date of a year-old sorrow,

That trod at first on autumn leaves,
Then peered through Christmas holly,
Went wailing through the snow of March
With plaintive melancholy.

It dimmed the eyes of violets,
Cankered all summer roses,